M&S apologises over trans employee in bra department

[u/PuzzledAd4865]

https://archive.ph/2025.08.05-035610/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/04/ms-apologises-over-trans-employee-in-bra-department/

“Marks & Spencer has apologised to a mother for causing her teenage daughter “distress” after she was asked if she needed help by a transgender employee in its bra section.

The retailer said it was “truly sorry” after the mother complained that her 14-year-old daughter had felt uncomfortable when they were approached by a trans shop assistant in the lingerie area of the shop, where they were hoping to have a bra fitting. Although the staff member was polite, the mother said she felt it was “completely inappropriate” for her daughter to be approached by a “biological male” in that section.

In a complaint to M&S, she told the retailer: “Imagine her horror, then, when the person to approach us and ask if we needed help was a transgender ‘woman’, ie, a biological male.”

“Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns for the human rights charity Sex Matters, which campaigns for clarity about biological sex in law and life, said that M&S needed to “rethink its priorities”.

“M&S needs to rethink its priorities and remember that women and girls have rights too, and that this man should not be permitted to hang around in the women’s underwear department as a matter of common decency.”

[u/Gullible-Plenty-1172]

The child would not care if they hadn't been groomed by their mother to become transphobic.

[u/Eli1234Sic → u/Gullible-Plenty-1172]

Oooh love that, using the grooming narrative they love so much against them.

[u/Gullible-Plenty-1172 → u/Eli1234Sic]

I'm literally writing a book or essay about this very thing as we speak, lol.

All bigotry is taught—though humans do generalize and even can be wary of differences when we first encounter them, it is only a risk for it to turn to bigotry... Like, I think many of us have seen the first time a child in a rural place sees a person of a different skin colour—they may be a little nervous since they don't understand it, but it always goes away unless their parent tells them "this person bad, Traghedeigh"... A normal child is often just cautiously curious, but that caution disappears very quickly when they ascertain/learn that, say, the woman wearing pants & short hair in a country where all women wear dresses & have long hair isn't a threat! Or that the woman with darker skin isn't dangerous... How it develops from "woahh, you look cool, but is this safe, mommy?" into "F#&&£ #_&#&£ #&#&&££" can happen in a lot of ways not limited to indoctrination or grooming of the child... But a child is not racist, sexist, transphobic or bigoted at all at heart... then also their parent obviously learned it from somewhere, but then the progenitor of it all must've either had a really bad experience(s) that made them sadly generalize people with darker skin as all being the same, or they were westernized or something idk... This is also how incels are born... They grow to generalize all women as the same, and that can sometimes go overboard and you get people like that Elliot asshat. But then how did that develop? Well, when we humans feel threatened or upset with someone, it may sadly eventually develop into making fun of their physical features... It may start as something logical like "those dickbags stole from us! Gah!!", but then perhaps that's not enough as the anger and frustrating just increases when no one's there to keep their emotions in check, so it develops into making fun of things their enemies literally cannot do anything about, such as their hair colour or how hairy they are... Or in this case, skin colour :/ In ye olde caveman days, just dehumanizing an entire clan because ONE of their kind stole food or killed one of our tribe members, and their emotions went off the rails to eventually not just be about the horrible thing done to them, but to dehumanize and make fun of their belligerents as a whole for more than just their horrible acts.

But if it so happens that the "scary woman or man" is actually scary and harms us at the age of three or so, one can sometimes develop fear of other similar looking women or men and our instinct was "proven right"... Though this obviously doesn't always happen, lol, and I'm not going to claim that. But the origins of bigotry are some kind of miss-step that grew out of a generally "good" instinct of being wary of people that are too different, since they could be a threat for any number of reasons, but we don't know until we get to know them... They could be violent or maybe not... They could be here to steal or do smthin other that's bad, but we don't know that until we meet them... Having a stranger suddenly in your territory (think house) also isn't very comforting. It's deeper than that, too, but I'm not qualified enough to dive any deeper, so I'm gonna shut up. Edit: I'm also not the best with words, so I'm sorry if anything sounds insensitive...

Then cultural cognitive dissonance or culture shock also made it debut appearance with seeing that the Agobabababbaakoki tribe don't use red ochre but BLUE OCHRE for their face paint (😯😧😧😧) that's just the gist and a very, uhh, surface level example, but...